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Friday, 30 June 2017

Newlife 0.4.9

Hello
everyone! Newlife 0.4.9 has been released.
Early-access Patrons can find it in the creations section here. The changelog is below.The previous version is now public. You can download it using the links on the right-hand side of the blog. The public version's changelog is here.As usual, saved files & templates from older versions probably won't work with newer ones. For
new players - just use one of the links to the right to get a zipfile containing Newlife. Once unzipped, you'll see a folder containing .jar and .exe files. Either one of these will run the game.For
either version you'll need to have Java installed. A lot of programs
use Java so you might well already have it. If the jar shows up as an
unrecognised file type, then you probably don't. In that case you can
get it from http://www.java.com/. The
exe should tell you if you don't have the right version on your
computer, but you'll still need to install java to run the game.There's a guide for new players here which includes some troubleshooting tips for installation & downloading.

This version improves the makeout scenes and adds the ability to shop for a wedding dress.

Major
changes & additions:

Updated the standing makeout position to allow making out with the
man behind you.

Once engaged you can now shop for a wedding dress.

Following an issue reported by OrangeJuice the game now tracks which
men are potential fathers for any pregnancy. Some existing scenes
have been modified for the situations where only one man could be
the father and for when your boyfriend is not a possible dad. This
may also allow improvements in the future to your character's
interactions with possible fathers.

As suggested by Der Kittin Kampf, it
is now possible to customise how attracted your character is to
particular male body types.

Added a new action suggested by
Gatekeeper where you can insist a man wear a condom after he's
refused during a makeout. This gives him another opportunity to wear
one and ends the makeout with a strong rejection if he doesn't.

Also added another similar action
that ends the makeout in a less forceful manner if neither of you
had a condom in the first place.

Improved some makeout actions

Added some extra text to the "show
off your breasts" cowgirl action, as requested by Jason Montana

Added a couple of new makeout
actions, including a dialogue one which includes some lines
submitted a long time ago by (I think) Cubano.

Added Likes_Anal to custom NPC
documentation. Thanks to Saur for reporting its absence.

Modified the “Exploit Friendship”
action during boss-persuasion to actually require him to be a friend
rather than just have high liking.

Split the “Go to Work” activity
into 3, as suggested by Monokuma: Work Hard, Normal Effort and Slack
Off. These affect your stress and job performance for the week.
Ambitious and Relaxed characters cannot choose the option opposite
their trait.

Following a suggestion from Monokuma,
rejecting an offered promotion will stop it being offered again for
a few weeks. If you get the scene where your boss needs additional
persuasion then it only counts as rejecting the promotion if you
leave immediately without trying anything to convince him.

Fixed a layout issue with the mental
traits panel of the character creation screen.

46 comments:

Not sure. It'll probably be one of the later updates in the 0.4.x work because it's the culmination of that release and will build on a lot of its content. I definitely will want to improve cheating first at the very least, and perhaps further changes too.

I might also split it over a couple of releases and probably several sub-scenes. It's such an important scene that it'll demand a lot of content. and there are a number of unusual paths that will need special handling - at the very least there's the ones set out in the dress-shopping scene.

Yes pleeeease, more cheating. also, is there anything planned concerning cucking your husband/fiancé/boyfriend? like inviting over a better hung hunk and making your bf watch you getting railed? Or do you have a list somewhere with cheating themed planned features?

But if it isn't too late (and too much trouble to implement)? The wedding would be a great place for a last-ditch attempt to change the PC's mind.

For more romantic NPCs who are in love with the PC, bursting through the doors at the "speak now or forever hold your peace" line with a desperate plea to call off the wedding might be a nice way to spice it up.

For more sleazy/crude NPCs, it might be fun to have them sneak into the room as the PC bride-to-be is waiting for the wedding (or even as PC is finishing getting dressed) for a last-minute quickie. Either to try to fuck the PC so well that she changes her mind, if they do love her... or just for the satisfaction of knowing that they left their mark inside her, and it's dripping out of her as she's walking down the aisle and standing at the altar. ;)

(Or, for the Impregnator types, just to try to knock her up and let the new husband take the responsibility for the child!)

I don't know how tricky these would be to implement with what you already have, but if they're easy enough to work in, they could be fun. :)

Newlife scenes take a long time to write because they need to work for all combinations of variables (personalities, traits, relationship levels etc) that the participants can have. Adding an extra character multiplies out those combinations even further. A 2p sex scene is already a significant piece of work, and a 3p one would be difficult to complete in the time available for a release.

This is why the horse+jerk scene has such heavy restrictions on the participants (e.g. Horse always having the same body-type). It's because that was the way I could write a 3p makeout scene in the available time. Similarly, the 3p cowgirl sex scene with the female friend only works because they PC's involvement is very limited so very few actions need to consider the state of all three characters.

In the long run, it might be feasible to have a general 3p sex scene as an open collaboration now that the user-submissions stuff is in the game. It doesn't feel like a reasonable goal for me as just 1 writer with the limitation that I need to release at least once a month, but as a longer-term side-project with multiple contributors it might work. That won't be something to start straight away though: the submissions system will need refinement and some extensions first.

As for traits, I'm currently working on improving how cheating is handled. One trait that I'll be adding for that is sort of an equivalent of a polyamorous one: I'll be calling it LIKES_TO_SHARE and it'll be for NPCs who get turned on by their girlfriend sleeping with other men.

No, the game's designed around a 52-week time limit and I don't intend to add significant content that's only available past that date, especially not stuff that would need an exceptionally long game - it'd take 936 turns past their birth to get an 18-year-old child.

I also won't be adding content around the PC's family from before the game starts. This is because the player-character is supposed to be the player themselves. That's why the start is "near future" rather than "present day" - it's so the game can say that some unspecified events have happened that get the player from their current life situation to the one they're in at the beginning of the game.

Adding family to the player is therefore impossible because I obviously can't program in a reasonable facsimile of the player's RL family members and it'd be quite un-immersive to have the game procedurally generate family for them.

When your character is ready to have a kid, a flag can be imposed she wants to get preggers. NPCs react as they should (family oriented are happy, those who don't won't be team-players in the process)

After a few times of trying to get pregnant and failing perhaps your character can try on her one (aka calling another guy, dress up sexy and getting knocked up) or adding the "want to get pregnant option in various scenes.

Lastly, I really suggest another place to have sex after the leaving the club, like having your guy bring you to a sleazy motel for a shag.

Hi there! There's an INFERTILE trait for male NPCs, but it only appears if set for custom ones.

I'll be working on improved cheating handling over the next release, but that'll principally focus on the NPC's reactions to discovering infidelity rather than specific paths leading up to her cheating.

As for visiting hotels, That will be something to be considered in the future - especially once the PC can properly live together with an NPC, and there are risks to bringing other men back to her home.

First off going to say I enjoy your game and the scenes are very well done. My question is are there other 3-some scenes other then the gym one with Horse(might have spelled wrong), or is there a way to start a 3-some or bigger grouping by some other mean either mff or mmf or similar?

What if you used an arraylist of the guys (and set a max)?The scene could work like this (just one way): -The player character sets up the gangbang/sex party/whatever (maybe at the apartment or a rented venue or something), and contacts guys to be involved. This could be automatic, like house parties, or let player call specific people. Maybe shy characters could be invited by a perverted guy (maybe friend or boyfriend) who sets it up. -It starts off similar to the Horse/Gym jerk beginning scene, where people say high, and then the player can start to get the guys riled up (strip-tease, grind someone random, etc). -Then, when sufficiently horny, a guy could initiate the sex part by asking to go first. The player could then either accept, or invite a specific guy to go first. If the player starts it, they choose at the start. -Before sex begins, the guys are all put into a list (an arrayList could work well), with the guy who 'goes first' on top, and the others below him (order chosen by the game). -The player could then choose a position (double penetration, spit roast, etc.), and the guys at the top of the list would be used to fill the male role in that position. -the scene could play out mostly automatically with the player able to make a few actions and decide when to change to a new position, like the 'ask him to fuck your mouth' scene. -Then, each guy could leave after the cum once, moving to a separate 'finished' arraylist (or simply removed from the first one, if they aren't needed in the scene anymore), and then the next guy in the list fills the 'vacant hole'. (This could also be a chance to let the player change the position.) -When all have finished, the event could end (possibly with the character covered in semen and the men all saying something based on their traits).

You could even add some extra stuff, like the player could choose to let the player make it a 'pregnancy gangbang' (or something), where the point is for her to get pregnant (no condoms, only inside, etc).I don't know your code, but it seems like it could work. What do you think?

The issue isn't the technical aspect of transferring objects between scenes, but the writing challenge of acceptably handling all combinations of variables on the characters. Newlife has a very wide range of possible personality types, traits and relationship situations.

Dialogue, action choices and descriptive text all need to make sense for all valid combinations that can be present. That doesn't mean literally taking the cartesian product of all variable combinations (which would be impossible to implement) but rather making sure there's at least an "ok" path for each one.

Adding extra characters multiplies up the number of combinations, which means the complexity increases exponentially.

For instance, imagine an action where a jerk npc insults the pc. The PC needs suitable reactions: either as chooseable actions or as an automatic response. Perhaps she has low-self-esteem and agrees, likes_rough and enjoys it, shy so she stays quiet, bitchy so she reacts rudely, none of the above so she's offended and annoyed. Even then, you can imagine yet more possibilities that might need to be added: would a bitch character who loves the man react the same as one who hates him?

Now imagine another man is there. He needs his reactions to be considered, not just for the action itself but also for every one of the pc's reactions. An interaction with a bitchy PC and 2 mean jerks would be different from bitchy+ jerk + loving boyfriend which would be different from bitchy + mean jerk + jerk who's falling for her.

Then this needs to be multiplied out by every action in the scene: what if the first guy isn't a jerk and instead of insulting her he says something nice? Or something sexual based on a trait? All of these need to be written.

The need to handle all these variable combinations is the main challenge in writing for Newlife and is why a general 3p scene isn't very feasible.

The "PC watches her friend have sex" one only works because it has very few 3-way interactions due to the PC mostly being an observer, and the "horse + friend makeout" is feasible only because both NPCs have extremely strict restrictions on their traits to cut down on variations. Horse's friend was hardcoded to always be misanthrope+cold-hearted, a combination which is never generated by the normal algorithm, just so the scene didn't have to be written for the situation where he likes or loves the pc.

Well a simple workaround would be to limit the number of possibilities that the PC can encounter. Simply put, you could form groups of friends for NPCs. For the sake of argument let's limit the group to two people each. The friends would have to have compatible traits. For example, two jerks could be friends, a selfish person and a caring person can be friends (coz who will he exploit otherwise). This would also make sense since you don't want just anybody to see you naked. They might be available standing at the club together. So, if you have a sultry vibe they may approach you. Or you could proposition them.

You could also have this be just a one time event where you could have only your boyfriend or fiance allotted a best friend, in which case you may demand a threesome. Whether your significant other agrees to it or not will depend on their traits. I believe this will considerably reduce the amount of work required.

Also, I have a query. There is no change in the gym threesome scene after you are the gym-jerk's girlfriend or fiancee. Is this by design or just for the want of better text.

I am not a patron on Patreon so really looking forward to this one when it's out!

I have been enjoying each release of your game for a while, and have a few suggestions.

First, it'd be nice to have an option for the player character to invite men for sex (like in the club bathrooms), if they have the appropriate traits. For example, an outgoing, flirty, non-refined character may invite an attractive man to the bathroom, and the man can reject (if they have the refined trait). You could even add a trait for such a thing, like Nymphomaniac or something, if you think it warrants one (and it could even affect stress levels when you do/don't have sex).

It'd be helpful for those who want to play characters that have sex as much as possible, and would be fairly simple to add (I may have looked at the game's code, and added this with a bytecode editor).

A few other suggestions for further down the road (would take more dev time) would be exhibitionist and group content.

The exhibitionist stuff could be streaking, moving clothes yourself to show off (like in the bar), public sex shows, or just the character getting more aroused/less stressed when wearing revealing clothes (like a short skirt with no panties). These would just require separate scenes.

The group content would be more difficult to do, but I have a few ideas. They could similar to the Horse gym scene, but allows having sex with more than 1 person at a time and possibly larger groups. Things like gangbangs, double penetration, spit roast, etc. This would be a bit harder to implement, with all the variables to keep track of, but could be done with an arraylist of the guys (possibly allowing for any number of men to be in the scene). Maybe they each leave after the cum once, moving to a separate arraylist (or simply removed from the first one, if they aren't needed in the scene anymore), and when all have finished, the event could end (possibly with the character covered in semen and the men all saying something based on their traits). It'd be a bit more work, but could be a fun addition.I could give a code example if you want, but it'd take a while as I don't know the engine you used and can only read the obfuscated code with de-compilation tools (no normal variable/class names, and very hard to decipher).

*The previous post was deleted b/c I couldn't seem to edit it (new to blogspot), and it needed some reformatting for readability.

On a side note, I think it would be interesting if the PC could leave the bf/fiance/husband (with whom the PC would be madly in love, but the sex sphere would be lacking) for the jerkish other guy who "rocks her socks in bed" :). What do you think about that?

Just a quick report regarding the note on being able to insist that your partner wear protection:

I've not yet been able to get this to occur under any circumstance. To test, I was playing with a freshly made character in the patched version, set up to be predominately cute and casual, and generally fun-loving and sexually aggressive (one time with Likes Bare selected, a second time without), and playing with Iron Will, just to be sure that it wasn't getting blocked by an established mechanic.

So far, I've sometimes been able to say *Both* 'Tell him you're unprotected' And 'request condom', when previously doing either one would remove them both from your action list, but neither time that has worked as actually interrupted the scene when he refused repeatedly, or showed anything other than their respective normal dialogues.

This doesn't seem to happen at all for make-outs at home, or bedroom scenes, either, so I've yet to see the text for stopping the scene based on his refusal at all.

Something else I've noticed, on that note, is that, even when playing with Iron Will on, I'm very often not presented with the chance to ask for protection at all (as though I'm failing will saves, I suspect), even in situations where we've both got our bits out and he's right up close.

On the whole, I was quite excited and pleased to read that this was going to be a thing now - Being able to tell a partner that if he isn't going to be safe, then there isn't going to be sex, is something that feels like we should always have had the option of (or at the very least, a partner's refusing to use protection giving you an automatic success for being able to end the scene voluntarily next action).

Maybe related - I had problems requesting the guy to pull out in 4.7. The option simply didn't show up, even immediately after orgasm. Was that rebalanced recently? Not sure on will level, but I'm certain it wasn't a 'loves bare' character.

The initial marriage update won't include a "housewife" option where the PC stops working. This will need NPC careers to be properly added along with different wealth levels and content to support a "gold-digger" playstyle. Once that's added it might be a sound addition, but that's probably too far in the future for me to be planning for right now.

Is there any possible way to use custom characters for the dance class npcs? I've tried creating four npcs with the good dancer and fashionable trait, but the game still auto-generates four other npcs.

Would it ever be possible in the near or late future to play a game/session only using custom characters? On an unrelated note, is it hardcoded for your current boyfriend/fiancee to never join the party game in the House Party activity? Thanks for replying

It might be mostly-possible at some point in the future. There are a few events that create NPCs dynamically and couldn't reasonably be rewritten to use existing ones, so those will always use the standard algorithm. They're small rare events though: things like the one where you run into your friend's hookup in a cafe and he may or may not get added to the main list of NPCs depending on your choices. The dance NPCs will probably be made customisable at some point, although not in the next release.

Your bf is indeed hardcoded to never participate in the house-party games, as handling of cheating isn't really in-depth enough to support that. Once cheating is improved it might become possible, or there could be interactions where he discovers what's going on and gets upset.

Essentially yes. There'll eventually be an option to continue past the ending and the time-frame can already be customised using the customisation panel at game start, but the content will always be balanced around a 52-week game.

I love the game - quite honestly it's hard to finish all 52 weeks if I actually read everything, because I eventually have to 'relieve' myself :P

I wanted to suggest that the 'spend time with friends' have a chance to pick from some of the content in the 'befriend' scenes...AND/OR...It might be a way to invite someone to a date that isn't necessarily romantic... or to actually invite someone to a date vs. having to be invited... and just not necessarily have to 'pop the question' of being friends.

This comes up because I tried to look at the decrypted code and noticed there was a LOT of naughty content in those scenes that I've NEVER actually seen in-game. Typically I just get the "I don't wanna be your friend, I wanna be your boyfriend" (Even the Misanthrope/Cold-hearted Gym Jerk!) response and when I agree it just goes into normal sexing at home and when I refuse it gives a tantrum-but-now-friends scene.

Maybe also add a clear path to 'friends with benefits' which would initiate that content?

I want to report a wrong line in the game (I'm using version 4.8). It goes like this:

"Cubano tells you that he sometimes can't believe that a beauty like you would be his boyfriend and you make him so happy he doesn't have words to describe it."

Then again, it's kinda amusing that a man refers to a woman as his boyfriend lolI noticed the line appearing during the "ask him to f your mouth" action. The PC's traits that I think are influencing this text to appear are beautiful and toned, and she doesn't find the guy attractive.

On a completely separate note, I'd also really like to have a way to increase the chances of exhibition/voyeur scenes (like the befriend content, theater, sex shop)... they seem to become less common as the guy starts to like you more... and nearly nonexistent after boyfriend status.

I'd also like the option for a posh/refined PC to get into those situations and act embarrassed/uncomfortable - similar to how they act when their date is ugly (less responsive, slow to get excited because they're thinking about what other people will see/think/say).

Hey SO, I tried your game (the female start) and I think it has great potential. What maybe I find missing more is content: there is a lot of repetition and not enough content to maintain interest, in my opinion. You already have a lot of variety and characters, what I suggest you is to take those characters (make no more or little more) and make them more "real", be it by adding more dialogues and interactions or especially by adding some sort of quests/stories to them. Every one of them has his own character\behaviour, build on that and make them more unique and less artificial. GL ;)